Know when to quit

With the launch of our new book, The Best of Company, I have had to explain the source of the articles in the book.

You see for four years Company of Women published its small but mighty magazine Company which was much-loved and distributed across Canada.  However, the publication also offered me a big business lesson – know when to quit.

As a writer and avid reader, I still strongly believe in the power of the printed word, and the magazine fast became my favourite project.  It took up much of my time as I garnered up articles, sought out advertisers and oversaw the production of the quarterly magazine.

However, as I shared at a recent meeting, it was a money-pit.  Launched in 2007 it faired well at the beginning but with the downturn in the economy, it became increasingly difficult to secure enough advertising to cover the production and distribution costs.

But remember, it was my favourite project, so I kept trucking.  I even convinced myself that it was a membership service, rationalizing and justifying the expense because we were providing useful information to our members.

And I did that for four years.  True it did make us unique and could be classified as a membership and recruitment tool.  But as the bills came in and I was writing cheques for thousands with each issue,  I reluctantly realized there was no way I could continue.  

A good friend, Michele Bailey, of Blazing the Agency, generously agreed to do the layout for the last issue for free, but really it was delaying the inevitable. More buying me time to get used to the idea that it wasn’t financially viable to carry on.

My lesson from all this is that you have to know when to stop; when to pull the plug on a business venture that is just not working financially, no matter how many resources you throw at it.   In other words, I should have made this decision way earlier.

My other piece of advice is to track the numbers. Find ways to measure the results. Ask tough questions. While Company created increased awareness of our organization, when I looked at the funds coming in vs. the funds going out, it wasn’t working.

You have to be honestly brutal with yourself.   No excuses. No rationalization.  If it ain’t working, it ain’t working.

Back to the book, if you have missed our articles or never caught them first time around – check into The Best of Company, which provides 50 of the best, along with a bonus on networking.  Copies of the book will be available at our events and will shortly be available online at www.companyofwomen.ca

Three words to live your life by

Do you write down your New Year resolutions?  I stopped doing that several years ago as each year it was the same thing – lose weight, exercise more, etc… etc…  

No.  Instead I come up with three words that will shape and hopefully drive my life for the coming year.   I’ve found in the past that this has worked well for me, because whenever an opportunity would come up or I’d be asked to do something, I could do a quick check-in to see if it fitted my priorities for the year, and if it didn’t, I’d gracefully decline.

What sort of words have I come up with? One year it was health, acceptance and authenticity – the driver that year being that I needed to take better care of myself.  Another year it was creativity, energy and connectivity, and then we had courage, curiosity and collaboration.  Much depended on what I wanted to focus on that year or what had happened in the previous year to make me want to go in a certain direction.

So as we enter 2016, I am back selecting my words for the new year ahead.   

So… drum roll please…. What are the words for 2016?

Launch. Learn. Life. (I am big on alliteration)  

Launch because I am starting a new venture - Full Circle Publishing - through which we will help authors launch their books, taking the book from concept to completion.  It’s exciting and scary at the same time, but I am looking forward to this new challenge.  And who knows, maybe we will re-launch our magazine Company, which was a pet project of mine for years.

Starting anything new means that you are on a learning curve, and I am no exception. I’ve always been a lifelong learner and I welcome the opportunity to test the old grey cells before it’s too late.  

As for my third word – life – I really want to make sure that I have some down time in 2016 so it is not all work.  I guess the goal here is I am wanting to make sure I get a life.   

I have to say it’s tempting to also throw in a fourth word for 2016, because in order for all the above to work – I have to let go.  And I think it is feasible as I have a great team at Company of Women who will carry on the day-to-day work.  Plus I won’t be disappearing, just being more selective on where I participate.

So what’s your three words?  Try it on for size, you might be surprised where it takes you. 

Trust your instincts

When you start something new, you never really know what you don’t know.

As novices to the publishing industry, Chris and I were excited to learn that there were a couple of magazine conferences being held in Toronto last week. Not knowing which was the best one to attend, we signed up for both – taking a few workshops at each.

And we learned a lot. I even picked up some of the jargon.

But I think the best lesson was realizing that whether we knew it or not, intuitively we’ve being doing all the right things. It’s kind of reassuring to discover you actually know more than you think, and that when you know your reader, you’re more than half way there.

So many of the presenters were encouraging the magazines to launch websites and hold events to support their publication. I guess we have done it the other way round – with our magazine being the latest addition to our menu of services.

The second thing I observed is that there is a dire need for training on how to present an interesting workshop. Most of the presenters really knew their stuff, but relied way too heavily on their power point – some even reading out loud what was on the screen before us! Boring. Clearly they had never heard about how adults learn. So all you trainers out there – take note – here’s a potential training gig.

Last but no means least, in being out of the office for three days, I discovered that Company of Women can run very well without me. Kudos to Meg and Leah.

So I guess the message is that we shouldn’t second-guess ourselves, we know more than we think, and we should trust our instincts.